Saturday, November 06, 2010

Saving up Silver and Gold

...

The day Robb broke his back, I was supposed to start a hand-spinning class. When I called the store to tell them that I wouldn't be attending, and told them the reason, the person on the other end of the phone replied in a way that indicated to me that she was only half-listening, and that she was probably also updating her Facebook status, and picking dirt out from under her fingernails.

Me (trying to hold emotions in check): "I signed up for the spinning class that starts tonight, and I won't be able to attend, because my partner just broke his back, and we're at the Emergency Room. Could someone please call me later about rescheduling or about a refund?"

I did go to the class last week, and spent most of the two hours right on the verge of tears. It was pathetic. I was pathetic.

Earlier this summer, I developed a sudden and violent allergy to tomatoes.

(I may or may not have developed an allergy to every single food on this planet, because I literally cannot eat anything without experiencing horrible mouth-pain. I haven't written a lot about this, because my doctors and I cannot really figure this out. Also because it makes me look like a Total Crazy Person. Plus which, it sucks.)

We had an incredible bounty of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes ripen in our garden, and Robb couldn't possible eat them all. I decided to oven-dry, and then freeze them, in the hopes that the allergy might spontaneously go away, and that I could eat them in the future.

I figured I could save them up for another time, when I might actually enjoy eating them.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Have you tried seeking out any homeopathic remedies to your quandry? I just love that word.

I seem to remember reading somewhere about a specific "cleansing tea" that can be used to get rid of a build up of "toxins" (whatever the hell that is) and sort of re-start your system all over again. It was an Asian treatment... sorry I cant think of the name.

By the way, if your food is so restricted, are you taking vitamins? drinking enough juice or energy foods? You have to get a variety of foods into your system somehow, or your stressing you system even more... what are the chances this is related somehow to the illness you had earlier, where you had Jaundice?

It could be that your food allergies are a fragment left over from that. When I had been so sick overseas, it took me well over a year of treatment, and then more recovery time after that. It had messed up my kidneys something fierce, and it took a good long time of being gentle with my health after that to fully recover.

When I grow too much food and cant store it, I donate it to the local food shelters- they will take anything and everything now- its also good for your karma, as well as the bellies of your fellow Californians.

Oh sweet lady... your yarn is Not pathetic. In fact, if the yarn pictured is yours, it seems like you have a fairly well balanced twist going. It just takes some practice.Here's my advice that I've found helps new spinners the most:Sit at your wheel and treadle. Don't spin fiber... don't do anything with your hands... just treadle. Focus on keeping a steady, moderate pace. One you find that pace, just keep going. Usually within a couple days, you'll quickly build up the muscle memory in your legs so that later, when your hands are working with the fiber, you can ignore your feet and trust that they'll go the right speed without thought.

You poor thing. I had something similar but not so bad happen too. At 21, I developed 3 perforated ulcers in my esophagus. Any time my esophagus/stomach/intestines are upset, every little thing bothers me, particularly acidic foods (raspberries are my nemesis). I managed that for years.

Then at 32 or so, I suddenly found my lips swelling. After 3 months, painful gastritis and a hiatal hernia, I finally figured out that it was vitamin pills. After another decade, I realized it was the gluten in the vitamins. I'm not allergic to wheat. But I'm intolerant of gluten.

It took forever to figure out. I wish you more luck.

Oh, and many doctors thought I was nuts until the good one found those ulcers. He patted my arm and said "It's okay, you really were in a lot of pain."